The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry

by Tony Barnstone

  The rift hurts

  and my old feelings have no way out

  as tears drop.

  Lover, you are gone without a return date

  and I've written you a foot-long letter to be delivered by

  a west wind crane, a west wind crane,

  but where are you, lover,

  in the water villages or the mountain cities?

  LIU YONG

  (987–1053)

  Liu Yong came from Fujian. Though he was very talented as a musician and a poet, he led an itinerant and dissipated youth, passing the imperial examination only in 1034, at the age of forty-seven. He was content with a minor post as an agricultural supervisor in Zhejiang. Liu Wu-Chi paints the following portrait of Liu Yong: “In the early years of the Song dynasty, many poets had contributed to ci poetry, but it was Liu Yong who set a new standard for its form and style. Unsuccessful in the literary examination, Liu Yong held only minor positions in the outlying provinces and spent most of his time in the gay and congenial world of the capital. A profligate, he was addicted to the pleasures of the ‘singing towers and dancing pavilions,' where he moved amidst ‘a bevy of red sleeves in the upper chamber.' Friend and patron of the singing girls, he wrote ci songs to the new melodies they had learned to sing. He was popular with the common people, and his ci songs were sung wherever they gathered to draw water from the well.”1 Liu Yong was especially popular among the courtesans for whom he wrote new songs, but despite the extraordinary popularity of his songs, he died destitute. After his death, the courtesans started a tradition of visiting his tomb each year to pay him respects.

  To the Tune of “Phoenix Perched on the Parasol Tree”

  On a high tower I lean long against a slender breeze.

  My vision ends in spring sorrow

  rising dark and dark at the sky's edge.

  Grass colored by misty light of the dying sun.

  No words. Who can understand why I stand at this banister?

  Maybe I should go wild and get drunk,

  singing over my cup.

  But forced joy is tasteless.

  I don't regret my loosening belt and robe.

  I'm fading away for you.

  To the Tune of “Rain Hits a Bell”

  Cold cicadas sing plaintively.

  In twilight I face a long pavilion

  after a brief rain.

  Outside the city gate we drink farewell in a tent without joy,

  lingering

  while the boatman rushes us.

  Hand in hand, looking at each other through tears,

  we choke on words.

  How far you will be, across a thousand miles of mist and waves,

  past heavy evening mist hanging low on the broad horizon of Chu.

  Since ancient times, separation has wounded lovers,

  but it is worse

  today in cold and solitary autumn.

  Where will I be tonight when I sober up from the wine?

  —along a willow riverbank, in morning breeze, under a leftover

  moon?

  Though years spin past after we part

  all sweet hours and beautiful landscapes will seem counterfeit,

  and even if a thousand tender feelings rise in me,

  to whom will I reveal them?

  To the Tune of “New Chrysanthemum Flowers”

  About to draw the fragrant curtains and make love

  I knit my eyebrows—the night is so short!

  “Hurry up,

  you get in bed first

  and warm the mandarin-duck quilt for me.”

  After a moment, I put away my needlework

  and slip out of my silk skirt,

  each movement brimming with tender lust.

  “No, don't blow out the lamp by the bed.

  For every second that remains

  I want to see your lovely face.”

  To the Tune of “Poluomen Song”

  Last night

  I slept in my day clothes.

  Tonight

  I do it again

  after a little drink

  returning as late as the night drum's first beat,

  drunk and breathing heavily.

  After midnight

  I am awakened, by what?

  From a cold sky of frost

  a fine wind blows

  against my sparsely latticed window,

  flickering the lamp.

  Tossing in my empty bed I seek

  a dream of being in you like rain and clouds,

  but it dissipates as I lean against my pillow,

  thousands of feelings straining in my inch-sized heart.

  A few feet off feels as bad as a thousand miles.

  Such wonderful times, such great days,

  but we love each other uselessly.

  We don't know how to be together.

  1 Liu Wu-chi, An Introduction to Chinese Literature (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), p. 106. To match the usage in the rest of this book, we have converted the Wade-Giles transliteration of Chinese words and names in this passage to Pinyin transliteration.

  FAN ZHONGYAN

  (989–1052)

  Fan Zhongyan's father died when he was a child, and he was raised in great poverty in a Buddhist temple. He was lucky enough to be championed by patrons, who helped support him while he studied, and in 1015 he passed the imperial examinations and began an official career. He was a Confucian reformer, which landed him in political trouble. He was demoted and sent to fight the Xi Xia in their invasion of 1040, but he did so well in disciplining and administering the military that he was able to stop the Xi Xia, negotiate peace, and make a name for himself. Although his attempts to reform the Song bureaucracy were ultimately unsuccessful, he ended up a man of wealth and respect. The financial uncertainty he faced in youth motivated him to create an estate to support the poor in his family and assure them an education. His poetry is at once direct and delicate, and his subject matter ranges from military life to romantic estrangement.

  To the Tune of “Sumu Veil”

  A white cloud sky,

  and earth of yellow leaves

  as autumn color spreads on waves

  and a cold mist looks blue.

  The mountain reflects a slant sun as sky links with water.

  Grass is fragrant but emotionless,

  staying out of the sun.

  The homesick soul is darkened

  chasing the thoughts of a traveler

  every night sleepless

  unless a good dream keeps him in sleep.

  Bright moon, high tower. Don't stand there alone.

  When the wine pierces to an inner sorrow,

  it will rise as tears of love.

  To the Tune of “Imperial Avenue Procession”

  Busy leaves tumble over the fragrant steps

  in quiet night,

  a crisp cold sound.

  The curtain of pearls is rolled up, but her jade tower is empty.

  As the sky lightens the River of Stars pours down to earth.

  Each year on this night

  moonlight gleams like a silk ribbon

  but my lover is gone a thousand miles.

  My entrails feel shattered. I can't even get drunk.

  The wine I drink

  just turns to tears.

  A guttering lamp, the pillow aslant,

  I know the taste of sleeping alone,

  and it seems as if

  between knitted brows and my heart I'm caught

  with no possible escape.

  MEI YAOCHEN

  (1002.-1060)

  Mei Yaochen was an official-scholar of the early Song dynasty whose poems helped initiate a new realism in the poetry of his age. He was a lifelong friend of the poet Ouyang Xiu, but he never attained Ouyang Xiu's career success. He was forty-nine when he finally passed the imperial examinations, and his career was marked by assignments in the provinces alternating with periods in the capital. Twenty-eight hundred of h
is poems survive in an edition that Ouyang Xiu edited. His early poems are marked by social criticism based on a neo-Confucianism that sought to reform the military and civil services; these poems tended to be written in the “old style” form of verse (gushi). Mei Yaochen was also a distinctly personal poet who wrote about the loss of his first wife and baby son in 1044 and about the death of a baby daughter a few years later. His poems are colloquial and confessional and strive for a simplicity of speech that suggests meanings beyond the words themselves; as he writes in one poem: “Today as in ancient times/it's hard to write a simple poem.”

  Plum Rain

  For three days rain did not stop,

  earthworms climbed into my hall,

  wet mushrooms grew on dry fences,

  and damp air brought white mold to clothes.

  Frogs in the east pond,

  one jumps after another endlessly.

  Reeds invade my flower garden,

  suddenly as tall as the banister.

  No wagon and horse in front of my door.

  The moss looks so dark.

  Zhaoting Mountain behind the house

  is blocked by clouds again

  and directionless where can I go?

  I just meditate on a bed

  in solitude and forget outside concerns,

  in a low voice read aloud the Daoist canon.1

  My wife laughs at my leisure,

  “Why not raise a cup to yourself?”

  She is better than the wife of Bolun.2

  She stays by my side when I am drunk.

  On the Death of a Newborn Child

  The flowers in bud on the trees

  Are pure like this dead child.

  The East wind will not let them last.

  It will blow them into blossom,

  And at last into the earth.

  It is the same with this beautiful life

  Which was so dear to me.

  While his mother is weeping tears of blood,

  Her breasts are still filling with milk.

  Translated by Kenneth Rexroth

  Sorrow

  Heaven took my wife. Now it

  Has also taken my son.

  My eyes are not allowed a

  Dry season. It is too much

  For my heart. I long for death.

  When the rain falls and enters

  The earth, when a pearl drops into

  The depth of the sea, you can

  Dive in the sea and find the

  Pearl, you can dig in the earth

  And find the water. But no one

  Has ever come back from the

  Underground Springs. Once gone, life

  Is over for good. My chest

  Tightens against me. I have

  No one to turn to. Nothing,

  Not even a shadow in a mirror.

  Translated by Kenneth Rexroth

  A Small Village

  The Huai River opens up to sandbars and suddenly—a village.

  A thin, collapsed bramble fence suggests a gate.

  Cold hens cluck to friends when they find food.

  A shirtless old man hugs a grandchild close.

  A wild boat tilts like a bird stretching over a broken mooring rope.

  Water eats the roots of dead mulberry trees.

  I sigh to see a life so hard.

  The census taker is mistaken. Is this what it is to be a citizen?1

  Reply to Caishu's “Ancient Temple by a River”

  Old trees with tangled hanging tassels

  by a deserted temple open to the river.

  Rain, rain threw down the clay statues,

  and wind blew down this ancient building.

  Wild birds nest in dusty shrines;

  fishermen hold a bamboo lottery cup.

  About to play the tune “Mountain Ghost,”2 I stop:

  the Verses of Chu make me too sad.

  The Potter

  The potter uses all the clay before his door

  yet has not one tile for his own house.

  Those whose ten fingers never touched clay

  live in tall houses with fish-scale tiles.

  1 ”Daoist canon,” literally, “Huangting canon,” a seven-character song telling how to reach Daoist longevity through self-cultivation.

  2 In the Jin dynasty, Liu Ling, who was known as Bolun, was one of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. He indulged in wine and had no respect for manners or rules. His wife, in an attempt to stop him from drinking, destroyed his set of drinking cups and utensils. Rather than stop, he instead wrote an ode to the virtue of wine.

  1 The line literally says, “It's a mistake to register these people as the king dom's citizens,” but the implication is that the government does not take care of its people.

  2 ”Mountain Ghost” is a poem by Qu Yuan from the Verses of Chu (see the Verses of Chu in this book).

  OUYANG XIU

  (1007–1072)

  Ouyang Xiu was raised in great poverty by his widowed mother in an isolated region of what is today Hubei. He nevertheless gained access to books (facilitated by the rise of printing early in the Song dynasty) and studied for the imperial examinations. While studying he was strongly influenced by Han Yu, whose works had been largely forgotten by this time. He passed the imperial examinations in 1030 and embarked on a successful career as an official in Luoyang. He is the author of a famous history, The New History of the Tang, and the compiler of The New History of the Five Dynasties, and he wrote an influential set of commentaries on historical inscriptions titled Postscripts to Collected Ancient Inscriptions. He is also the author of a set of commentaries on poetics titled Mr. One-six's Talks on Poetics. (Mr. One-six was a pen name of his that referred to his desire to be always in the presence of his wine, chess set, library, zither, and archaeological collection; the five things he enjoyed plus himself—one old man among them—made six “ones.”) This compilation was the first treatise in the aphoristic poetry talk (shi-hua) form. Ouyang Xiu is esteemed as a prose master whose essays are characterized by clean and simple language and fluid argumentation. He helped lead a movement away from ornamental prose styles to a simpler style of “ancient prose,” a traditionalist movement that had as its aim a Confucian moral regeneration.

  Ouyang Xiu's poetry is also marvelous, and he was instrumental in making the lyric (ci) form (poems written to fit popular songs) a widespread and important Song poetic style. His plain style and use of colloquial expressions made his poetry accessible to larger audiences and helped preserve its freshness for audiences today. Like Andrew Marvell, he was a sensualist known for his carpe diem poems. Just before his death he wrote a poem about how “Just before the frost comes, the flowers/facing the high pavilion seem so bright.” He was also an individualist, both in his approach to writing and in his interpretations of the classics; sinologist J. P. Seaton sees this individualism as an outgrowth of his self-education. A man with many talents and dimensions, Ouyang Xiu is considered a prime example of the Chinese ideal of the multifaceted scholar-official, equivalent to the Western ideal of the Renaissance man.

  About Myself

  I'm quite a loose and free person,

  and the same kind of official.

  I look like a big wine pot

  carried around in a wagon.

  Fashion chasers won't bend their heads to look at me.

  To whom can I talk? I just stay silent.

  Fortunately I have talented friends from Luoyang

  who keep me company each day.

  We get drunk from redistilled pure wine,

  and wear spring orchids for the scent.

  After mulling over official documents,

  poetry and wine are enough to make me happy.

  To the Tune of “Spring in the Tower of Jade”

  The wild geese flown, spring also goes.

  I pick over the thousands of loose threads in this floating life.

  They come like a spring dream, ephemeral,

  then are go
ne like morning clouds, traceless.

  Hearing my zither, she gave me her jade pendant with an

  immortal's love,

  I couldn't make her stay, though I held onto her silk skirt until it tore.

  Listen to me, don't be the only sober one.

  The rest of us are rotten drunk among the flowers.

  The Lamp-wick's Ashes, Blossoms Droop, the Moon Like Frost

  The lamp-wick's ashes, blossoms droop, the moon like frost, now light of sun and moon together through the screen. Almost too drunk, she has a fragrance of her own. Two hands, the dancing done, grasp blue-green sleeve. In the sound of the song we'll drain the cup again. Don't turn your pretty face away, you'll break my heart.

  Translated by J. P. Seaton

  To the Tune of “Spring in the Tower of Jade”

  You've left and I don't know if you're near or far.

  Everything I see is broken and dull.

  The farther you go, the fewer letters come.

  Who can I ask? This river is so broad it drowns the fish.1

  In deep night the wind beats the bamboo—it sounds like autumn,

  ten thousand leaves making a thousand cries of grief.

  Alone on my pillow I search for dreams of you.

  No dream comes. I watch the lamp—guttering, out.

  Painting Eyebrows, to the Tune of “Pouring Out Deep Emotions”

  A light frost on the curtain in early morning, she rolls it up,

  and blows her hands warm, begins to paint her face new.

  Longing for him, she draws her eyebrows long as distant mountains.

  Thinking about the past,

  she sighs over the flowing petals